


What Sort of Devil

by Fyre



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 06:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last person Javert expected to encounter upon the barricade was an old enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Sort of Devil

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this 6 years ago, but now, the flames of my Les Mis love have been fanned again, and I had to dig out my old writing :)
> 
> It has a companion piece in the shape of [No Worse than any Man](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636090)

He struggles when they leave him. The bindings are tight. One thing, he thinks with bitterness, that this army of pitiful children are adept at. Beyond the dark hole they have abandoned him in, he can hear the shouts and calls of those who think they have won a great victory.

The attack will come soon, he know. Perhaps the folly of capture will prove the saving grace. Beneath the barricade, trapped between stone walls and heaps of rubbish, he is probably the safest of them all.

In the dark silence, he sits. Voices reach his ears, but indistinct and muffled by crashing feet. The barricade creaks, sections shifting alarmingly overhead. He makes no sound, staring coldly at the darkness. Soon the child army will be crushed.

The attack comes, violent and vicious, and the children laugh and crow in triumph. He almost laughs his contempt. They think it so easy. It is only one attack. There will be more. They always forget that. The soldiers have patience and orders. They will prevail.

Voices again, above, and footfalls approaching.

Probably the fair-haired leader of the group, come to mock his captive enemy.

The makeshift steps to his prison creak and he forces his gaze ahead of him. Cool indifference to hot-headed youth. Yet, the breathing of the man who has descended into his pit does not sound young. His gaze darts sidelong.

“Valjean!” The whisper escapes him before he can quash it, and he smothers a curse.

True enough, it is the spectre whom he has hunted for so many years: the one man who escaped him, and the one man he has vowed to capture once more. He wants to scream at the irony of the Almighty’s hand, to have him captive before this man, this man of all men.

“We meet again.”

How dare he speak so! Straining against his bonds, Javert turns contemptuously. He will not be afraid, not of this wretched, damned, thief. “You’ve hungered for this all your life,” he spits, poison slicking every word. Challenge and anger flood through him. This man, this thief, this criminal is still nothing more than that. “Take your revenge!”

Strangely, his heart twists when the knife flashes in the man’s hand, but he cannot and will not show fear, now that Valjean shows his true nature once more! He knew it was always so. The man could not change, even if he professed it was so!

He glares into the blackness, forcing aside fear, clinging to the knowledge that he was right about Valjean, right to hunt him as he did. “How right you should kill with a knife.”

A broad hand clutches his shoulder, the grip fierce, and he waits for the pain, lips curling in bitter triumph. Then, no. It cannot be so! The ropes fall from his arms and he hears the quiet words spoken close to his ear: “You talk too much. Your life is safe in my hands.”

Javert scrambles to his feet, staring at the man. A criminal! He was a criminal, from the gutter as Javert was so many years ago. How can it be? He has fought every inch of the way to find his position. He did everything, and this man, this man who must have been guilty to run and keep running, speaks so!

“I don’t understand,” he says before he can stop himself, watching the knife, the blade gleaming in the dull light. Valjean should slay him, cut off the hunt. Were he in Valjean’s place, he would do that. He knew he would. Cut his throat and leave him, fleeing. In this place where rules were not rules, he could do it and no one would doubt him.

The knife is folded, slipped away. “Get out of here,” the man whispers. Those words, a yellow ticket from a gaoler to a prisoner.

No! No, it cannot be so simple.

Javert steps forward, towards him. “Valjean take care,” he cautions, I’m warning you...”

The aged hand dismisses him, a benediction, a mockery. “Clear out of here.”

He cannot let it end like this, not while he has breath, not while he know the heart of the man. “Once a thief, forever a thief,” he snarls, stalking towards the man. “What you want, you always steal.” He growls, his eyes flashing. “You will trade your life for mine?” Ah yes, it must be so. “Yes! Valjean, you want a deal!” A criminal seeking to buy his life with the life of a good, decent man! He snatches Valjean’s hand and forces the gun from the old man’s belt into it. “Shoot me now, for all I care,” he hisses, forcing the muzzle of the gun beneath his own chin. “If you let me go, beware.” He meets pale, watery eyes, and whispers the vengeful vow, “You’ll still answer to Javert!”

I will find you, he promises with his eyes, with his words. You are mine and I will hunt you until my dying day.

Above them, there are footsteps and voices, roused to alarm by Javert’s shout.

Valjean moves suddenly and Javert stifles a cry as his back collides with the wall. Broad hands grip his shoulders, holding him there. His own hands rise, to fend the man off, but stop. This is what he sought! This violence! This anger! To know that the man’s heart was still black.

Hot breaths slew against his ear and Valjean’s beard rasps on his cheek. “You are wrong,” It is only a whisper, but it is like a blow, worse than a blow, “and always have been wrong.” Broad ribs rise and fall beneath his hands, every breath a labour. “I’m a man no worse than any man.” A sigh, hot and weary makes him shudder. “You are free, and there are no conditions, no bargains or petitions.” For a moment, their temples touch. “There’s nothing that I blame you for.”

Despite himself, Javert’s hold tightens, and he cannot think, cannot understand. The man fled. He hid from the law. He was guilty. Still is guilty. And yet, he speaks so. He grants mercy. He shows pity. He, who has crawled from the gutter, from a level to match Javert’s own.

The aged shaggy head bows, and the whisper is against his cheek, honest, more truth and acceptance than he has heard for years. “You have done your duty. Nothing more.”

It is like a blow. His work, so much struggle and toil to attain his place, and Valjean is so accepting. He should fight and struggle, yet he accepts, and he understands! A criminal and a thief and a liar, and yet he understands. He has crawled from the gutter too, but for him, it seems to have been so easy. He accepts, he understands, he is everything Javert has striven to be. He is the same, yet he is nothing like him.

Javert’s hands shake and his eyes burn and he pushes, forcing the man away, the man whom he has hunted so fiercely for so long. He cannot bear to know that here is a man who is like him. It cannot be. He cannot be like him.

Valjean draws back, the moment gone. “If I come out of this alive,” he says softly, understanding again, knowing Javert better than he did himself, “you’ll find me at number fifty-five Rue Plumet.” For a moment, a tired smile flickers across his lips, as one granted to an old friend on leaving a society gathering, and he bows his head. “No doubt our paths will cross again.”

Javert wants to curse him, wishes he could understand.

The gun gestures towards the shadows. “Go,” Valjean whispers, for a moment nothing more than a weary old man.

His courage deserting him, Javert forces out a curse, his voice drawn to breaking. Full of shame and confusion, he flees into the darkness. When the retort of the pistol cracks through the air, he prays for the mercy of the ball in his back, but it seems that God and man have no mercy for him.


End file.
